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Post by AztecWilliam on Mar 18, 2012 21:13:01 GMT -8
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Post by aztec70 on Mar 18, 2012 21:49:13 GMT -8
Professor Blinder is calling on both sides to work together to solve our financial problems. No one disagrees with that, do they? Think watching both sides agree on the common good for the future would be more than just fun. It would be exhilarating.
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Post by AztecWilliam on Mar 19, 2012 14:37:51 GMT -8
Professor Blinder is calling on both sides to work together to solve our financial problems. No one disagrees with that, do they? Think watching both sides agree on the common good for the future would be more than just fun. It would be exhilarating. Well, I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. From the perspective of many (including your obedient servant). governments generally have gone way too far in the direction of progressive welfare statism. I appreciate that those on the Left have good intentions about helping people through governmental action. The problem is that it is very, very easy for the entitlement mentality to take over with little or no thought given to possibility of government to sustain ever-growing entitlement spending. Especially in an era of declining populations. The result is that when governments correctly see a need to cut back on entitlements to prevent financial collapse (i.e., bankruptcy of the government as a whole), violent reaction from the populace make reforms all but impossible to carry out. We've seen the violence against governments trying to rationalize their fiscal situations in many European countries. The fact is that when the national debt gets to a high enough level, raising taxes is not an option. You just can't tax yourself out of the facing the results of generations of promising people too much at the taxpayers' expense. That is especially true in countries whose declining populations provide fewer and fewer workers who must pay more and more to sustain the welfare state. When the Democrats talk about compromise, they usually mean raising taxes now and keeping them raised indefinitely, in exchange for promises to cut spending down the road. The flaw in that idea is that future congresses are in no way bound to keep the promises of today's politicians. The taxes stay raised but the cuts never happen. Therefore we have to borrow more and more money. Sooner or later, the amount of every year's budget that goes to paying interest on that borrowed money becomes a greater and greater percentage of the national spending. That can't go on forever. AzWm |
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Post by davdesid on Mar 19, 2012 15:05:11 GMT -8
Wars against arithmetic always end badly.
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